Ready...Aim...FIRE!!!

One enjoyable aspect of my production life on XCOM: Enemy Unknown was the teams need for cinematic ideas.  This ranged from large Tentpole cinematics to simpler moments when you're in the XCOM Base and something interesting happens.  Pitching ideas is always fun for the team, and every once and a while I had the time to pre-vis a rough story board for one of these.

Here is an example from when a player first gets his/her Laser and Plasma weapons:

A very simple illustration of new tech the player just acquired, and an attempt at making that moment feel rewarding.  Some of these ideas stuck and ended up in the final game.  The camera placement, and decisions on what each character is doing during the shots is obviously fleshed out later.

I'm a huge fan of taking the time to explore ideas cheaply before any real time is committed to modeling, animating, etc.  You don't get much cheaper than storyboards considering how quick and easy it is to iterate on any given idea.